‘it made me question whether I should even pursue that career field at all’

the drawing   PART 3

It wasn’t un­til I was 20 that I start­ed to get back into my old fa­vorite shows, and just like be­fore, watch­ing In­vad­er Zim ig­nit­ed a flame of cre­ativ­i­ty in­side me that made me want to cre­ate my own char­ac­ters and my own sto­ries. At that time, I had also been at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege for about a year and I de­cid­ed to start work­ing to­wards an As­so­ciate Degree.

Dur­ing this time, I was also try­ing to de­vel­op my own style even fur­ther be­cause, af­ter not draw­ing for years, I re­lied heav­i­ly on the ref­er­ences from In­vad­er Zim and Drag­onball Z.

I just re­al­ly liked the big eyes, spiked hair, and the ex­ag­ger­at­ed faces they would do. It was fun to draw that. But I want­ed to de­sign an orig­i­nal char­ac­ter that was fe­male, and at the same time, I start­ed think­ing of all the ideas about what she would be like and what kind of world she would live in. I would have pages and pages of sketch­es and scrib­bles as I tried to de­vel­op her uni­verse. I want­ed to cre­ate a com­ic, or a graph­ic nov­el and have a re­al­ly cool sto­ry that was dystopi­an and dark, but also fun­ny and ran­dom. I just re­al­ly en­joyed that kind of dark humor.

So I en­rolled in a few class­es at my lo­cal col­lege so that I could learn even more about de­sign and sto­ry telling, and all the oth­er things that come with cre­at­ing your own world with your own char­ac­ters. Some­thing I had done even as a kid. It was just so ex­cit­ing and fun for me. And I couldn’t wait to hone my skills and get out into the world of oth­er artists and creators!

Only, for some rea­son, I was knocked down be­fore I had even start­ed running.

There were sev­er­al rea­sons why. De­pres­sion for one, be­cause there would be so many times when I would just lose pas­sion to do re­al­ly much of anything.

But the oth­er thing was that peo­ple in those class­es start­ed to con­stant­ly point out that my art style was too much like ani­me or too sim­i­lar to Jho­nen Vasquez.

When I was just be­gin­ning. There was one guy who thought he knew every­thing about every­thing, and held his head up like he was bet­ter than every­one else. He ap­proached me one day out­side of class while I was draw­ing and act­ed like he was in­ter­est­ed. So I showed him some of my sketch­es and the first thing he point­ed out was that it looked like Jhonen’s work. As if it was some kind of crime to be in­spired by an artist that made you want to get out there and try to fig­ure out your own sto­ries of mad­ness and chaos. I don’t know about you, but isn’t that what peo­ple are sup­posed to do? And I have to ad­mit. My char­ac­ter de­signs were very sim­i­lar to his work. But that’s what I was try­ing to change. I didn’t WANT to copy an­oth­er person’s style. I want­ed to build off of it and cre­ate my own! I even ex­plained to this know it all that my in­ten­tion wasn’t to steal, but I was mere­ly in the be­gin­ning of my artis­tic jour­ney. But that didn’t stop him from point­ing it out every chance he got. Even when we were in an il­lus­tra­tion class to­geth­er and we were all dis­play­ing our work in front of every­one and we had to stand up in front of the rest of the stu­dents. When the pro­fes­sor said he liked my project, this pesky class­mate couldn’t wait to in­form him that I had com­mit­ted the hor­ri­ble, un­for­giv­able crime of draw­ing my char­ac­ters sim­i­lar­ly to my fa­vorite artist. Oh, heav­ens no! Why would I do such a thing? The HORROR!

But it didn’t stop there! Dur­ing my time at that col­lege I had two pro­fes­sors who ap­par­ent­ly be­lieved the same thing as that nag­ging class­mate, and were all too hap­py to point out that my work re­mind­ed them of some­one else’s, there­fore it was bad.

One of them told me my style looked too much like ani­me, the oth­er said it was too much like In­vad­er Zim. Mean­while, half the class was draw­ing char­ac­ters and en­vi­ron­ments that looked all too sim­i­lar too Dis­ney or Pixar, but that was ap­par­ent­ly just fine!

One of the pro­fes­sors in par­tic­u­lar made it his goal for the se­mes­ter to break down all of my con­fi­dence by telling me that my work looked like copies of oth­er char­ac­ters, or that he’d seen some­thing like it before.

He even stopped by when it wasn’t even his class and as he walked through the room, he asked me if I had made the draw­ing that was on on the com­put­er. It was an Adobe Il­lus­tra­tor class, and the as­sign­ment was to cre­ate shapes with­out us­ing a gra­di­ent tool. We were in­struct­ed to pick out any item that we want­ed from our home or what­ev­er else. I picked a lit­tle stuffed bun­ny that my friend had sent me from Japan. It was a tiny lit­tle thing that had a huge head, long ears, and a small body. It was pret­ty sim­plis­tic, but in­ter­est­ing at the same time. And I thought it would work per­fect­ly, and de­cid­ed to use it as my ref­er­ence for the project.

So when I said yes, as­sum­ing that he was won­der­ing if I had copied an­oth­er student’s home­work or some­thing, he start­ed tear­ing into my work and even in­struct­ed me to pull up a DIF­FER­ENT pic­ture I’d been work­ing on, that wasn’t even part of the project! It was my own lit­tle il­lus­tra­tion I had made that I was so proud of. But he start­ed pick­ing it apart, telling me all of the things that were wrong with it and ask­ing me why I was copy­ing oth­er styles. I told him that was nev­er my in­ten­tion, and he went on to say that I wouldn’t ever be able to sell that stuff be­cause it was just too much like some­one else’s work. And this was a piece that I had lit­er­al­ly drawn with­out any ref­er­ence pic­ture, just based off my imag­i­na­tion. I wasn’t even plan­ning on sell­ing it or any­thing like that. It was a fuck­ing de­sign I made for fun. But for some rea­son, he couldn’t han­dle that fact, and had to keep telling me all the rea­sons why it was wrong.

It was only lat­er on that I re­al­ized he was ask­ing if I’d come up with the bunny’s de­sign. But by then it was too late.

He didn’t stop there though, nope! When I took the 2D An­i­ma­tion class that was be­ing taught only by him, he took de­light in em­bar­rass­ing me in front of the en­tire class dur­ing our fi­nal pre­sen­ta­tion. The as­sign­ment was to do a lip sync­ing an­i­ma­tion based off ten sec­onds of au­dio tak­en from any me­dia we want­ed to choose from. Af­ter spend­ing the se­mes­ter an­i­mat­ing noth­ing but bounc­ing balls and run­ning face­less fig­ures, I was ex­cit­ed to try out my su­per spec­tac­u­lar skills on some ac­tu­al an­i­ma­tion! And of course, since I was still on an In­vad­er Zim high, I chose a clip from that show for my first an­i­ma­tion. I spent a lot of time try­ing to repli­cate the way the char­ac­ters mouths and tongues when they spoke, and I was re­al­ly proud of what I had ac­com­plished. Af­ter all, it was re­al­ly my first an­i­ma­tion I’d ever done! Even a few of the stu­dents were im­pressed by how well I’d got­ten the an­i­ma­tion to look like the real thing. And I felt re­al­ly proud for a sliv­er of a second.

But of course, Mr. Pro­fes­sor of mis­ery had to step in and tell me that there were just too many things wrong with my project. He start­ed out by say­ing that it was al­most TOO good. Mean­ing that it looked too much like the ac­tu­al char­ac­ters, and that I wouldn’t be able to do any­thing with it. But what did he think I was try­ing to do? Steal the rights to the show and try to make it my­self?! I thought that I was do­ing a school project that I would most like­ly nev­er work on af­ter that class end­ed. And don’t most an­i­ma­tors have to copy the style of the show they’re work­ing on any­way? Did he not re­al­ize that this was le­git­i­mate­ly my first time an­i­mat­ing char­ac­ters at all? I don’t know. I hon­est­ly re­al­ly don’t.

But when I think back on what hap­pened, it makes me re­al­ly up­set. I mean, pro­fes­sors are sup­posed to be guid­ing you and teach­ing you how to im­prove your craft, right? They should be en­cour­ag­ing you to do your best, not tear­ing down every­thing you show them. I un­der­stand con­struc­tive crit­i­cism and I think that’s a GOOD thing. But this wasn’t con­struc­tive at all. In fact, it ac­tu­al­ly de­con­struct­ed my con­fi­dence in my­self, and in my art­work. It made me ques­tion whether I should even pur­sue that ca­reer field at all.

I mean, I get it. Steal­ing some­one else’s art style and claim­ing it as your own is un­ac­cept­able, no mat­ter what. But not once did I ever do any­thing like that. I was sim­ply us­ing it to in­spire me to try and cre­ate my own style. What is wrong with that?

And if you think about it, doesn’t pret­ty much every­thing re­mind you of some­thing else nowa­days? Is that re­al­ly so bad? Didn’t some of the world’s most renowned painters start with try­ing to paint the works from their fa­vorite artists? Isn’t that how we learn things in the first place?

I don’t know. All I know is that what those pro­fes­sors said re­al­ly messed with me for a while. And most of that is my fault, be­cause I shouldn’t have let their opin­ions mat­ter so much in the first place. But if you were be­ing told by a well re­spect­ed au­thor­i­ty fig­ure that every­thing you’re do­ing is wrong, and then nev­er try­ing to in­struct you on how you could make it bet­ter, wouldn’t you start to think twice about what you were doing?

Any­how, that was sev­er­al years ago, and even though it held me back a lit­tle longer than I’d liked, I’ve fi­nal­ly start­ed be­ing con­fi­dent in my art again. I’m draw­ing more now than I have been since I took those class­es, and you want to know some­thing fun­ny? A lot of peo­ple seem to en­joy my style. So I guess those pro­fes­sors were wrong.

Who would have thought that there would be peo­ple out there with dif­fer­ent tastes, and dif­fer­ent opinions?

It’s crazy to even think about that, am I right?

 

—kait­lyn­jane

Flom­mist KAiT­LYN­jane has been draw­ing and writ­ing sto­ries ever since she knew how to scrib­ble on a piece of pa­per, or her sister’s fore­head when she was just two weeks old. Copy­right © 2020 KAiTLYNjane.

 

PLEASE   SUPPORT   FLOMM
TIPS  +  DONATIONS  DISCREETLY  ACCEPTED

FLOMM
promotes learning  +  education worldwide
drawing attention to works by nü  +  upcoming artists,
designers, writers, musicians  +  MOR

OUR INVOLVEMENT
– however –
is mostly paid for out of pocket or in trade

IF YOU ENJOY
wat  FLOMM  is doing here, please consider


1.   LEAVE US A TIP  :
use our tip jar whenever the mood hits



2.   BUY OUR SWAG  :
our approach is semi-green —
                all our  FLOMMHAUS  merch is made to order



3.   HELP US OUT  :
use our hashtags  #flomm  #flommus  #whereisflomm  #nüflommart  #flommist
when posting on ur socials —
or drop us a note and offer to help in some way
everything we do is on a volunteer basis —
             when we say  YOU CAN BE A FLOMMIST TOO  this is wat we mean

THANK YOU
your support helps our continued efforts
to create content across numerous platforms

clic 「 HIER   」 to return to the DER TUNG front page